Athletics program at Cohasset High School is a balancing game

Tuesday

Sep 6, 2016 at 6:41 AM

Amanda C. Thompson athompson@wickedlocal.com @MarinerAmandaT

Orchestrating the high school athletics program is a game of strategy, requiring chess-like finesse.

Statistically speaking, if you have a kid at Cohasset High School, he or she probably plays a sport. In fact, he or she probably plays more than one. Multi-sport athletes are mathematically required if 430 students are going to participate in sports over 700 times in any given year.

That’s a good thing, according to Athletic Director Ron Ford.

"You should play more than one sport," said Ford. "You don’t do leg day every day, and that’s not what colleges want anymore, either; they want kids who are well-rounded and take a break from their sport. If you do it 12 months a year, at some point you’re going to burn out or get injured."

Of course, in Cohasset, athletes aren’t just athletes. They’re also artists and actors, musicians and mathletes, debaters and delegates at Model UN.

"In a bigger school, kids would have to choose: athletics or drama," said Ford. "Our kids are multiple activity kids. One of my goals this year and every year is making sure that kids can be involved in the arts and other programs. That means we can’t have a field hockey game at same time as football, or we wouldn’t have a pep band."

Cohasset athletes definitely take advantage of the many opportunities available to them. Both the kids and the programs are maxed out, said Ford. But it’s a fragile balance.

"We’re still small," Ford said. "We have a number of co-op teams, and we don’t have to cut people. But at a bigger school, participation drops and the team just isn’t successful; here, if participation drops, we lose the program."

So far, the athletics department has kept it all in balance. Ford recently reported to the School Committee that the past year’s expenses and participation rates matched neatly with projections, and the department is on track for another great year with even better coordination with other programs.

"We ran the bottom line we said we were going to run," Ford said. "The report is a good tool for looking back on what we’ve done and project for upcoming years. Participation rates are great. It’s a big part of the school’s culture, and there are very few sports we don’t have at this point."

Other goals for the coming year include collaborating with the Town to improve the tennis courts and Milliken Field facilities, and increasing planning and scheduling around arts and other extracurricular clubs.

See our "Athletics by the numbers" sidebar for stats!

Follow Amanda on Twitter for updates: @MarinerAmandaT

Athletics by the numbers

Sports offered: 28

Teams: 45

Percentage of students currently or previously involved in sports: 55%